y more, Mother," she said. "They admitted it.
So here I am."

Y.D. was plainly perplexed. "It's about time you was halter-broke," he
commented, "but who's goin' to do it?"

"If a girl has learned to read and think, what more can the schools do
for her?" she demanded.

And Y.D., never having been to school, could not answer.

The sun was capping the Rockies with molten gold when the rancher and
his daughter swung down the foothill slopes to the camp on the South
Y.D. Strings of men and horses returning from the upland meadows could
be seen from the hillside as they descended.

Y.D.'s sharp eyes measured the scale of operations.

"They're hittin' the high spots," he said, approvingly. "That boy
Transley is a hum-dinger."

Zen made no reply.

"I say he's a hum-dinger," her father repeated.

The girl looked up with a quick flush of surprise. Y.D. was no puzzle to
her, and if he went out of his way to commend Transley he had a purpose.

"Mr. Transley seems to have made a hit with you, Dad," she remarked,
evasively.

"Well, I do like to see a man who's got the goods in him. I like a man
that can get there, just as I like a horse that can get there. I've
often wondered, Zen, what kind you'd take up with, when it came to that,
an' hoped he'd be a live crittur. After I'm dead an' buried I don't want
no other dead one spendin' my simoleons."

"How about Mr. Linder?" said Zen, naively.

Her father looked up sharply. "Zen," he said, "you're not serious?"

Zen laughed. "I don't figure you're exactly serious, Dad, in your
talk about Transley. You're just feeling out. Well--let me do a little
feeling out. How about Linder?"

"Linder's all right," Y.D. replied. "Better than the average, I admit.
But he's not the man Transley is. If he was, he wouldn't be workin' for
Transley. You can't keep a man down, Zen, if he's got the goods in him.
Linder comes up over the average, so's you can notice it, but not like
Transley does."

Zen did not pursue the subject. She understood her father's philosophy
very well indeed, and, to a large degree, she accepted it as her own. It
was natural that a man of Y.D.'s experience, who had begun life with
no favors and had asked none since, and had made of himself a big
success--it was natural that such a man should judge all others by their
material achievements. The only quality Y.D. took off his hat to was the
ability to do things. And Y.D.'s idea of things was very concrete; it
had to